Q: In my last marriage, when I took the decision to divorce my husband I felt it was necessary to do it, but after two years there’s still so much grief and missing of him. It was not a healthy relationship. It was terrible, really – so much anger – but I wonder if the bond was strengthening. Did I give up too early? This comes into my mind again and again, and makes it difficult to be in new relationships.

John: For the next two years, live in your bond with him regardless of the relationship having ended. The bond is real. Any resistance to that is the polarization that you strengthened in your self that is all about likes and dislikes.

When you’re quieted in your heart, free of your self, you only love him. You don’t need a relationship with him to show it. You let it show in your heart. Let your bond with him thrive in your heart. The bond is what’s real. The relationship might not have been real. The bond is what never dies. You can cover it, you can look away from it, or you can let it live in you. The presence of that bond is presence of being. If you start a new relationship, keep living in this other bond.

Q1: I come from the States, and my question is about my connection to our society. I’ve never been political but I feel a sense of connection and therefore would like to be part of moving things in a more positive direction than I see happening politically. It feels hard to address without being angry about what’s going on, yet it doesn’t feel right not to address it.

John: In addressing it, by coming from a place within you that doesn’t relate to lack: relating from a fundamental goodness within. Address anything of what you speak without leaving that goodness within, so that you’re not coming from a place of negativity – you’re not coming from a place of dependency within on something on the surface having to change. That then makes you an influence of goodness in a difficult situation. It doesn’t have to bring about change; you have already changed.

If you’re not coming from a place of lack within in addressing something from outside of your self, what you’re offering is some measure of wholeness in the midst of external lack.

Q2: I’ve been thinking about a similar thing but the focus is not political: it’s with those we love. As we’re all on this journey of becoming who we really are, how can we inspire others to find themselves as well?

John: First, by not needing to. If you have personal need to be a goodness influence, it won’t be all that good. If that initiative isn’t based on a personal need of yours, it grows as a natural fruit of what you’re being within. Your own sense of well-being won’t come from being able to help someone: your own inner well being just naturally comes out to others, regardless of what they do with it.

Q2: So when our need or desire to help others is not motivated at all by our own self but just by love, you’re saying it will just come naturally as we live?

John: Yes. Then it’s like a river. It doesn’t stop moving. Essentially, love is what you really are. If you take your self or your personality seriously, then you will use the movement of what you really are, and you’ll use what feels like love to satisfy something in your self, to bring a measure of satisfaction or a sense of well being in your personality. Then you’ll need others so that you can love, instead of you simply being relaxed in what you really are.

Q: It’s a rare opportunity to sit with someone like you and I’m trying to think of the best question. Is there a benefit in verbally asking a question and being answered?

John: Anything that is real is worth it.

Q: I’ve read your book ‘Unveiling Reality’ in which you speak of your awakening and later enlightenment. I think I’ve had awakening experiences, but I’d love to know the hallmarks of awakening and enlightenment.

John: Awakening is being able to see beingness, being able to drink in beingness, being able to distinguish between beingness and everything else. You can be awakened to see, and that doesn’t mean that there is a surrender to be what you see. Awakening isn’t it. There is only one it, and that is the jewel of purity of heart.

The real gem of consciousness is purity of heart. Awakening is merely the glistening of that, but it is not yet that. It makes no difference how awakened you are; it makes no difference how much your eyes have been opened to see reality. All that makes any difference is how surrendered are you to whatever it is that you genuinely see, within, that you know is real. If you’re massively awakened then you would be able to speak of much, but that doesn’t mean at all that you are being much. Or you could be not awakened at all – completely blind within – and be wonderfully surrendered within, completely at rest in not being able to see; being the jewel that cannot yet see. That is worth more than any awakening. When there’s purity of heart, whatever little bit you come to see that is real within, without resistance you become one with it.

Purity of heart is where surrender always matches seeing, where there’s no split between surrender and seeing. Then, regardless of how much you see, and regardless of how awakened you might not be, what you are being within is simple, unencumbered response to truth. Many are awakened. Many are awakened much. There are not many that are clean. Clean is worth more than seeing. Beauty in consciousness and cleanness in consciousness are inseparable. You can be clean and not awakened. You can be awakened and not clean. Wherever cleanness is, there is loveliness. Awakening without cleanness is serious trouble.

Q: How so?

John: Awakening without cleanness causes the most sophisticated and complex distortion within consciousness. It is seeing without completely surrendering. It is that that causes distortion within. Being able to see even more doesn’t make one clean. If there is not total surrender in seeing more, then one becomes more distorted in trying to keep what one sees, while not turning into what one sees.

Q:Is this why now I feel much more tension than I did previously? Life events have brought my awareness to a deep core pattern that I may not have seen had I not had an awakening and seen something of my true self, giving me the courage to go to the bottom and experience this pain.

John: One is better off not to become awakened than to become awakened, see what’s real, and not completely surrender to that. It is the absence of surrender, or the lack of surrender that creates distortion. When you become awakened and there’s not an absolute surrender to what is seen within in that awakening, then one actually believes that what is seen is yours, even though it’s not surrendered to. Then one can speak of what is real without being real. One can think about what is real without being real – being able to think that one actually has something when it is only surrender that is something. Awakening means that there is now a change of possibility. It is only total surrender that is an actual realization of that possibility. You are not what you see. You are what you surrender to. You can be greatly awakened and yet still surrendered to want. Then what one is is not an awakening, but a much more refined and sophisticated want.

Awakening is being able to see beingness, being able to distinguish beingness from everything else. Purity of heart is being one with that. Purity of heart means that one is home, having no split within. When there is purity of heart and awakening, then one is home within and can see. Enlightenment is after one is home, and seeing beingness, distinguishing it from everything else, and growing as a being. Then, in time, within such growing as a being, within the human consciousness, beingness becomes of age. Then it can begin to learn how to do beingness, without doing something. That’s enlightenment. Awakening doesn’t make you complete. It is only purity of heart that makes you complete. Enlightenment doesn’t make purity of heart more complete.

Q: What does?

John: Nothing. Awakening enables purity of heart to fill out the human consciousness. Enlightenment enables that to be usable.

Q: Where am I in this? Am I in pure egoic distortion or is there any measure of purity of heart here?

John: How much are you being surrender? Not just when the sun shines in consciousness, but also when there is a storm, and even more particularly when there’s fire.

Q: I don’t know if I can measure myself. A great deal of anger, hurt and fear came up for me in the last few weeks and rather than react to it I decided to feel it as much as I could, let it go wherever it wanted to within. It showed me the root fear that was driving everything. I don’t know if this means surrender or trying to fix it. I felt that I was honest with looking but I can’t measure myself.

John: Be open to see, and adore cleanness. Then surrender turns you into the beloved.

John: The perfect communion of you as a being, through all of your heart, including all of your self and all of your body. Sexuality is the engine of humanness. It belongs to your being, and when you move in your sexuality and you orientate to what you think and feel in your self, without any reference to your heart, then your sexuality is turned over to the conditioning in your self.

When your sexuality is returned to your being, by being only in your heart in it, and from there being what you know in your heart in it, then your sexuality and your movement in it has unlimited reach into your being. Through your own sexuality you comprehend your being, and through your sexuality you’re able to perfectly express your being, despite whatever condition your self is in.

Your sexuality is your most powerful means of making your being physical, but it can be used to make your self even more physical. Sexuality is the capacity that you have to commune directly with another from the innermost outwards. It belongs to your being. If you turn it around, then sexuality becomes an experience of attraction and aversion. It gives you your experience – powerful experience – of the unintegrated reach into the want and need of communion.

Q: I’ve recently welcomed into my home a family member who is an addict. Normally I’m a fairly balanced person, but now there’s uncertainty about how to manage everything and support her. I feel both resentment and great love. I’m struggling with how to be balanced in my heart amongst all the different responsibilities and give support, without really knowing how. Can you help?

John: Any past investments that you’ve had in hardening or in closing, any excuses that you have for ill-feeling or resentment you don’t need for you to be in your heart toward the other. When you enjoy and then love that you have no real reason for resentment, that leaves you unconditionally in your heart. So your first relationship with your family member is not by doing anything for her. Your first relationship and your deeper relationship is what you are in your heart toward the other. In the midst of anything that you’ve taken to heart of what the other has been, not been, or done to you, you unconditionally open and soften.

Without that, your past, because of how you relate to it, corrupts what you do for the other. Something of that story is present in your self always influencing, even when you don’t feel it. It’s what you’re being toward the other, and then with the other, that determines all of the greater value of what you do for the other. Without that, in your doing, you fool your self. Then you’ll do something to compensate for a lack in your self, concerning the other. In a really coarse kind of way that could appear as doing something good on the surface for the other because you have a sense of guilt for holding resentment, so instead of releasing the resentment, instead of fundamentally opening and softening, you’ll do good. When that’s there, the doing of the good is other than genuine.

When your real relationship from within your heart toward the other is simply clean, whatever you do will easily also be clean. Concerning the other, once you’ve released something of what you’ve taken to heart of any kind of ill-treatment, or anything where you’ve taken your self to heart – when that’s just simply released, then your relationship with the other from within you is clean and clear. Your movement toward the other on a heart level is no longer conditioned by something in your self or something in the other, so your love is unfettered. It’s unconditioned.

Then, when you bring the other into your household to help them, have really kind conditions so their presence there is conditional, while your deeper relationship towards the other is unconditional. You being both the unconditional and the conditional – but they’re on different levels – will bring up everything in your self that you’ve avoided and haven’t dealt with.

John: Yes. When you protect someone from hurt, the actual communication in that is that you’re telling them how bad it is, whereas when they’re hurting and you’re enjoying the other person, you’re telling them deep within how really all right everything is. So they realize a deeper level within than they’re experiencing in themselves within the hurt. It brings about a deeper perspective, so the next time there’s a difficulty in life that also really hurts, they remember what they went into the time before.

Q: And they get acquainted with it and start to trust it?

John: Yes. Within that there’s the realization that life isn’t about not hurting. Life is about the goodness of opening, the goodness of opening within, even while it hurts.

Q: Yes, I know that goodness, yet I notice that since having her I’ve tried to give her a life that would never hurt and that takes away the experience needed for a person to go deeper.

John: If you protect someone from hurt, you’re protecting them from what’s deeper. It isn’t the hurt that’s deeper, but when you focus on the hurt, you’re distracting the awareness within that person from what is deeper. You take them away from what is deeper by focusing them on the hurt, by trying to protect them from hurting.

Q: It seems so normal for a mother to want their child not to hurt. I hadn’t seen that we take something from them when we do that.

Q: I recently retired from work. I’m sixty-two. I intend to live beyond ninety and am thinking what to do with the remaining thirty years of my life. The question is about focus and choice. What is my task for these remaining thirty years in this life?

John: To awaken to your much greater interior within that hasn’t yet been a part of your life. Your awakening to that will cost you what has been your life.

Aside from anything at all to do with your self, you have knowledge that there’s more and that the more isn’t at all like your self; it isn’t at all like what your life has been. This more is not something that you’re familiar with, but when you’re completely at rest, quieted and gentled as awareness, you just simply know the truth of it.

If that knowledge within is likened to a door, you need to enter that door. The use of your mind isn’t going to help you. It is awareness alone that enters. If you use anything of your self or your person, if you use anything of your history, if you use anything that is from memory you’ll be entering more of what you have already been in your self. You won’t be entering this greater knowledge within that you have no understanding of and that you do simply know the truth of.

All you have of this is your knowing. As awareness you need to believe your own knowing of this. Believing such knowing that has nothing yet to do with your self has you, as awareness, directly relating to this much greater interior that isn’t limited to your body and is not at all limited to your self. It is so much beyond your self that from within your self, as a self, you cannot relate to it. Yet you, as awareness, know the truth of it.

Q: If I’m true in what my heart is wanting and desiring, it’s to have a child. It’s probably been six years since I’ve had a partner and I’m forty-four next month. I’m wondering whether to do it on my own, with insemination. I feel this strong desire and it’s been there for years. I would like any advice you have.

John: First, most deeply within, deep within your heart – deeply, gentled and quieted in your heart – there you have need of nothing. There isn’t anything that you need in this life for you to be quieted in the depth of your heart, for you to be what you really are. Not in your self, but deep within, you have need of nothing. You don’t need your personality, you don’t need your self. You don’t need anything that you’re accustomed to looking for and wanting to have in your life. As soon as you are unconditionally gentled and quieted in your heart, then your depth of peace is no longer dependent on anything outside of your self. It’s not dependent on the condition of your self. It isn’t dependent on your past. You don’t need to acquire anything and you don’t need to first change anything. You are just deeply okay, as is and there isn’t anything that can make that better.

Once that’s deeply settled in you, then it doesn’t really matter much what you do in your life. Whatever it is that you do will be an expression of what you’re most deeply being within, and you won’t be using what you do with your life and in your life to connect to that beingness; it’s already complete. And you have your whole life and everything that you do to express that completeness. Having a child won’t add anything to it. Losing anything in your life won’t take away from it.

Q: I hear that, and in our society if you don’t have a family you’re just excluded and it’s lonely.

John: Then you’re not gentled and quieted in your heart. When you are unconditionally rested in your heart, you may be alone but you won’t be lonely.

Q: I have a lot of solitude and I enjoy it. It’s a lot of solitude, though, and I guess I don’t want to live my life that way.

John: Live your life from the deepest within, from what isn’t easily seen within, but when you are deeply quieted within, you know. That depth of knowing and being what you know, and being rested in it: that’s you. It’s deeper than your life, it’s deeper than your self, and it’s what you let fill your self and your life. Then you really are existing and living from your innermost outwards instead of grasping at something outside of your self, or grasping at something about your self, or for your self, to have that depth of meaning within. In your thinking this doesn’t really offer you anything, but if you’re not coming from being gentled and quieted within, you’ll be circulating in your self and in your life, trying to satisfy what’s already there. You’ll live grasping, and there isn’t anything that will be enough.

This can be difficult to hear because it involves so much letting go of everything that you’ve invested in: how you’ve invested in what you want, how you’ve invested in the hopes in your self, how you’ve invested in things outside of your self that have a sense of meaning.

Your deepest sense of meaning comes from being meaning without you using anything that is yours to give you a sense of meaning, which only serves to separate you from what you deeply, really are, within.

A second questioner continues the conversation:

Q: Having a partner and a child comes from almost a primal desire to procreate. How does being in your heart align with not having those desires?

John: It’s not that you wouldn’t have those desires; it’s that your deepest sense of well-being isn’t dependent on them.

Q: If everyone were that comfortable with living in their deepest well-being and not procreating, wouldn’t that mean the end of the human race?

John: No. What would take place, then, is that this whole world would be different. Everything would go on, but so differently.

Q: My father has a mental health condition that’s rapidly getting worse. He’s so sweet and vulnerable in it. When I told him I was coming to this seminar he said “say a prayer for me.” I don’t know what to do for him, and I really love him. Can you help me?

John: Deeply within, enjoy what is there. Enjoy him as he loses his mind. As he loses his mind he’s able to realize differently. As he loses his mind he’s losing his old pathways, pathways that he didn’t need when his mind was good. As he loses those pathways, his opportunity is to be openness that isn’t held together or governed by familiarity. His opportunity is to love without a construct.

Q: Is it like in a newborn baby, before the child learns to have expression?

John: It’s a little more like a small child when it gets sick. When it’s still in its innocence and a small child gets sick, it’s whole interior opens and that interior moves from within the deep in a way that isn’t usual. It isn’t usual for that child so you see a different face in that child. You see a level of its interior up in its face, a level of its interior that’s different, and if that child isn’t just sick, but has a fever, then you see something that’s different again. Both are real.

It’s a little like your father is coming into a heavy fever and it isn’t going to go away. As he comes into that fever it’s easier to see him. If he doesn’t close and harden in it, his self becomes a little less visible and he becomes a little bit more visible. As he is opening in the midst of losing some of his mind he’s freely losing some of his form. What becomes so visible is what was always there before, but perhaps a little covered. In this way, as he is losing his mind, you are getting to know him.

Q: Is there anything that I can give to him in that?

John: Instead of giving him anything, sweetly enjoy him as you did when you were really little. Instead of seeing the loss of his mind, see him as he shows more and more. Directly enjoy him while some of his form is passing away. While you’re with him enjoy that you are going to lose your mind when you die – or earlier. That makes it easier for him to see you. Your mind is for what you are without your mind.

Q: Is it like that for a little child before it loses its innocence?

John: Yes. When innocence has a mind, innocence loves thinking. When you leave your innocence then you become stuck with thinking. When you’re in your innocence it is love that is thinking. Love that is thinking shows in the eyes. It shows in all of the face. If he has the presence of mind, when you see him again, and he asks you “what was your time like here?” then tell him that you got to know him more.

Q: I remember you once speaking to me of the value of just one word and how far it could take me. Would you say more?

John: When you’re really listening and very gentled within, there will always be one word that represents what you are most learning, one word being birthed in you. Then, what is being birthed with that one word is the depth of its meaning. One word slowly turns into a whole universe.

There is a whole gestation period in realizing just one word, in you slowly turning into the meaning of one word. You cannot come up with such a word. Such a word is conceived within your being, and slowly arises within you. Then you live cupping such a word within your heart, holding it as you would a baby, and that one word teaches you, just a holding a baby teaches you … taking care of that word in your heart until it is fully formed, and until you turn into that word.

If that were to happen fully with only one word per year, that would be tremendous inner growth – more than would happen with most in a lifetime.

Q: How could I take care of a word I don’t know, in my heart?

John: When you are entirely gentled within and really listening within, there will be one word in which its meaning speaks what you know, and then you just keep drinking of that one word. That one word then becomes your mother and your father.

Q: Thank you very much. For now it is ‘love.’

John: You can’t pick the word!A real living word chooses you – you cannot choose one.

A real living word chooses only a very gentled listener because it comes within you so gently and so delicately that if you are not gentled within, you won’t hear it. It is only when such a word is spoken within you that the whole universe responds, and then you see the meaning of that word everywhere. Then the whole universe is, to you, like a mother and a father teaching you.

Even if only one word lives within you for a lifetime, then you have not wasted your life.